by Harn, Darby
Ever The Hero
Darby Harn
Copyright © 2019 Darby Harn. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover and interior art by Alia Hess. www.cultofsasha.com
ISBN: 9781696995979
Fair Play Books
www.darbyharn.com
First Edition
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For my mother,
who taught me how to keep going.
Nothing human is alien to me.
- Heauton Timorumenos, Terence
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Acknowledgments
About the Author
COMING SUMMER 2020
Excerpt
One
CHECK ONE: ◻ Empowered ◻ Powerless
I bite my lip. “Is it a problem I don’t have any powers?”
The woman from HR wrinkles her nose. Must be a problem. I can’t tell. I’m no good at interviews. I’m no good at people, which is unfortunate given how many of them there are. Focus. Check the box. An interview at Great Power is a big deal, even if it’s open. I should be grateful for the opportunity. I should be terrified, but I’m not. That part of me never got switched on. Maybe it never got installed. Doesn’t matter. I can’t afford to be afraid; I’ve got to find a job, and soon. If I don’t, Ma and I will be out on the street.
“Generally, we employ Empowered,“ she says, and a stray lock of her hair levitates back in line with the rest. Telekinetic. Not telepathic, though; I probably wouldn’t have made it this far. “But some powerless work here. You can have superpowers, but not a brain.”
“I have a brain,” I say. “Probably goes without saying.”
“You’d be surprised.” She takes my application. “What is it you scrap and salvage?”
Good thing she can’t read minds. “Anything.”
A constant stream of people flows past me through the atrium of the Blackwood Building, one of the greatest engineering wonders in the world. The tower is a giant glass music box, all its floors, stairwells and elevator shafts exposed within a transparent shell free of any obvious architectural support. This woman frowning through my interview sees right through me, I think, but there’s no wonder.
“You didn’t go to college?”
I sit up straight. Smooth out the wrinkles in this blouse I thought was decent leaving the apartment, but now feels like someone else’s skin. “My dad died. My mom… I take care of her. It’s just the two of us. So a job here would be – ”
“I don’t live over there,” she says, wiggling her fingers toward the west, “but I’d think at twenty-seven, you’d have a lot more experience than you do. Retail. Something.”
I’ve loads of experience. Most of it doesn’t go on a resume. “Jobs are hard to come by across the river.”
“Your accent. What is that?”
My lips twist together. “My mother is Irish.”
“I was going to say. I didn’t think there were, you know.” She wiggles her fingers again. “Black Irish.”
“Do you have a pen? You’ll need to sign an NDA.”
She smiles. Sort of. “What brought her over?”
“I suppose she thought she was going to get a job here.”
The woman puts on one of those smiles people wear, meant to convey sympathy. “What was your name again?”
“Kit.”
“Your ID says Kitsie.”
“It’s just Kit.”
She clasps her hands and smiles at me. “Kit, I’m sorry. Great Power is one of the biggest corporations in the world, and positions here, as you can imagine, are very competitive.”
“I can do anything. I work hard. I’ll learn.”
“Most of our menial jobs go to Empowered as well. There just aren’t jobs for all of us that take proper advantage of our skill sets,” she says. “And that’s the marvel of Great Power, isn’t it? We don’t just work for humanity, but for all mankind.”
“Right,” I say. “Except when you’re on strike.”
I think she’s mad, but she’s smiling. Probably shouldn’t have said that. Or anything. I never know what to say; I’m always ready with something to say. The two never line up.
“It’s not technically a strike,” she says. “The city is behind on its dues. The contract for our services is void.”
In comic books, super heroes help any and everyone without expectation of return. Cat stuck in a tree? No worries. Your airplane is crashing to earth? You’re grand. Comic books fell out of fashion after 1968, when the reality of a super powered world priced out the fantasy. So did helping people, I guess.
“I just meant…”
My application breezes telekinetically back across the table into my hands. “Kit, it was lovely meeting you.”
I need this job. I’ve got to find something. Don’t say any of that. Smile. Get up. Thank her. Be normal.
Be human.
“Thanks,” I say. “Thank you.”
“Next,” she says, as I pass the line of applicants winding through the lobby. Open interviews never happen at GP for a reason. If you’re born with a power, you have a job; it’s pretty much mandated by law. The Empowered Registration Act requires the use of Empowered abilities be sanctioned by a contract. Empowered can’t stop a runaway train, much less take out the trash, without a licensed permit. People had enough of the wanton chaos and destruction of self-appointed guardians of truth and justice back in the 70s and ever since, it’s been Great Power, selling super-security to anyone who can afford it.
The further Break Pointe gets behind on its dues, the longer it takes GP to show up when you call for help. Ma and I just have the city plan, so if anything happens to us, we’ll be waiting a long time.
Ma is waiting for me.
Signs bob on the surface of a river of protesters stretching back to Claremont from the front gates. GREAT POWER MEANS GREAT RESPONSIBILITY. Just as many in support of GP. NO MORE HANDOUTS. I zip up my leather jacket and make my way through the line as quietly as I can. Easy enough.
If there’s any power I do have, it’s not being heard.
I take off my headband. My curls spring back into their cloud. The other dents don’t pop out so easy. I’ve half a mind to stay a bit longer, and go through the plaza over to the lakeshore. You don’t get views like this across the river. Most every view in The Derelicts is obstructed by peaks of piled rubble, or the wall. Ten minutes. I could do with ten minutes of sunshine and a soft, gentle breeze right now. I’ve been gone hours. Ma needs me. I unlock my bike from the rack and walk it through the people taking their selfies with the tower.
The light on the corner of Excelsior takes forever. A
s many people linger here as in the plaza. The foot of the Van Stitchel Bridge provides a close enough vantage point on The Derelicts that you can get your picture and say you were there. Halfway across the span is the best view of the island, giving you a peek over the Quarantine Zone, but few people brave that. I should take pictures and sell them. I don’t know. It’s not like I have any luck now with what I take from the ruins.
A bullet whistles past me, right to left, like a bottle rocket but without the air in the sound. Right across my chest. It hits a skinny, naked tree and sounds something like when you drop a stack of papers on the floor. A hard slap.
Semi-automatic thunder ricochets around the concrete canyon on Excelsior. Two men in all black run out of Break Pointe Trust, shooting randomly and I scramble back behind the corner of the building behind me.
I didn’t think I’d die this way.
A woman with red hair crouches low on the sidewalk next to me. She taps the back of her hand. “Press yours, too.”
I swipe at the half moon screen of my PEAL, fixed to the back of my hand. The adhesive wore off ages ago, the pliable Personal Electronic Assistant Link like an old bandage that refuses to stay put. Someone else tossed it after the energy cell died, but I was able to fix it, and spark a bit of life in it again. The Great Power app expands across the wrinkled screen. For what it’s worth, I activate my emergency beacon. A two-dimensional map of the mounting, blinking alerts morphs to an image of the most famous, the most powerful, the most beautiful, of all the Empowered employed by the company.
Valene.
She’s like Bowie and Garbo had a space baby. I swear to God I press this thing just to see her. Valene Blackwood holds her hand to her ear, dark eyes gazing out from the PEAL like she’s looking right at me, me and no one else, the words GREAT POWER ANSWERS THE CALL squeezing her out of frame until she’s gone.
I look up. I’m always looking up. Always waiting.
I imagine her floating through the air on a wave of sound. Sonic suit a royal, metallic purple. Dark hair slicked back with this sheen to it, like it’s always wet. Lips red and full, a spot of blood on a napkin and fuck me why that’s hot, but it is. She descends from the heavens, arms out, hands open.
I hear you, she says.
Red whimpers next to me. “They’re not coming.”
The gunmen are. Both of them just stroll into the street, shooting, like they know as well as I do no one will stop them. One of them wanders back up the stairs of the bank. Shattered glass dances down the concrete steps. Screams drown out his laughter. A shadow collapses around him and then a geyser of red mist erupts from the stairs. Pieces of the gun rain down on us, along with what I think are shards of bone. Chains jangle on the wind. The mist clears and a man hovers over the blood splattered stairs. Dark, featureless scrim-net armor sheathes him head to toe, making him something of a rattling oil slick.
“He came,” Red says, gushing a sigh of relief.
Second to Valene, The Interdictor is the most famous, and feared, of the Empowered. He doesn’t do it for me in quite the way she does, but right now he’s ok in my book.
The other gunman runs, right towards us. It happens so fast. I run, back toward the tower. Help. I look back. The gunman has Red. This confusion on her face. This fear. She raises her arm in the air, showing her PEAL and the flashing red light of the Great Power app to The Interdictor. Help me!
The Interdictor doesn’t move. He hovers over the steps of the bank, and I’m sure Break Pointe Trust is up to date on their bill. This lady, people like her and me on the city plan, not so much. He’s not going to do anything. She’s going to die.
I should keep running.
The gunman doesn’t see me. He backs toward me, firing into the air. I can get away. He turns around and he’s got another hostage, or victim, and Ma has nothing. No one.
Run.
I grab the strap of the gun and I yank it down hard as I can. His rifle vaults up in the air and I slam my fist into his Adam’s apple. He falls out of the strap, choking. Just to be sure I slam the butt of the rifle into his temple. I discharge the clip and throw it into the street. The gun I just drop.
Red stares at me in shock.
“I’m from across the river,” I say.
I drop the gun, get on my bike, and head onto the Stitch. No one stops me. No one tries to get a statement, or say thank you, or ask me if I’m all right. Halfway across, I stop. I’m fine, but the loose grate on the pedestrian path across the bridge rattles so hard I need a minute. Should have taken those ten by the lake. A view from the bridge will have to do. My hands still shake. Reverb. I swipe at my PEAL, just to see her. I hear you. I wish it had been Valene. She would have helped us. I know it.
The app times out. Valene fades from the screen. Ruins claw at the sunset. Threads of birds sew up invisible scars across the sky. They never heal. The broken stalk of Berger Tower shoulders the rickety fence of the surviving skyline, remnant shards of concrete and steel except for one, glaring exception. Most people think of the wreck of the alien ship as this sci-fi castle, with the crooked towers and broken hull, exposing the interior. To me, it’s a cathedral. Every thing’s Catholic when you’re Irish, or so my mother says. Hard to say.
I never go to church. I just come here.
Back the way I came, the Blackwood Building slivers the gathering dusk like the light through a cracked door. A mile away. A world away. Break Pointe has always been two cities, rich and poor, black and white, island and peninsula. Since 1968, it’s been powerless and Empowered. When the ship crashed, radiation leaked from the core into the air. Ground. Water. Some people got cancer. Others got powers. Abilities. Most of us have nothing at all, except the hope that one day, things will get better. It’s going to get better. I can make this work.
I have to.
I get back on the bike, and speed downhill off the bridge, until the rubble of buildings blocks my way on Shelley, and I have to find a way through the ruin, like I always do.
I look up, and wait for the sky to strange. Tonight, I’m in luck. Hundreds of birds twist into knots high above the ruins. I’ve got to be quick; if the birds untangle before I find what they’ve stuck on, there’s no guarantee of finding it again. The rusty chains of my bike whine through the dark. Streets vanish into piled rubble. Dirt paths snake through grass shrouding vacants peeling like white girls in summer, away from dead ground yielding nothing but ginger red trees glowing with radiation. I should be terrified. The birds tumble north, over downtown. Don’t go over the wall. There’s no getting past the wall. Even if you did, it’s a mile of landmines, broken earth and torn reality between you and the wreck of the alien ship.
The radiation down here is safe enough. I haven’t developed any tumors or super powers. So far. What you have to watch out for is the magnetic field the ship still generates. Makes you dizzy if you get too close. Magnetic lines snag on hidden debris and the flux disrupts the signal off cell towers, navigational instruments on aircraft if they come too close and lucky for me, the behavior of birds. This time, they’ve caught on something big. Something valuable. This is the only industry in The Derelicts. The only living you can make. Digging. Hunting.
Hoping.
All the best stuff got scavenged before the wreck was sealed off in ‘68. Conduit. Filament. Something like that, and I’d be set. Fifty years later, all that’s left is random, common debris embedded in the tissue of the city, and less of that all the time. The ruins haven’t yielded anything but frustration in weeks. The knot of birds loosens as the grip of what holds them weakens. C’mon. Hold on.
Black lines spring in every direction, free into the night and I lose the trail to whatever treasure the birds might have been leading me to. I grip the handlebars. I don’t get angry. I just get on, back through the ruins, tangled as the cages in the sky.
Cloudy glass speckles the floor in a trail into the kitchen. Ma goes room to room in the apartment, unscrewing the light bulbs. Smashing them. I sweep up the
broken glass, like I always do. I brush it away into the trash, like I always do. The routine is so precise I place a hollow box of bandages on the counter. Empty pill bottles roll around in the drawer. All the spare light bulbs are gone. My hands fall to the counter, next to a note from the landlord, tucked in between the utility bill and a notice from the clinic about another missed appointment.
Friday or else.
I tuck the note in the drawer with the others. “Ma.”
Ma stands in the living room and stares into the sun, like she can unscrew it. She fights the stubborn window. The breeze threatens some life in the frayed end of her nightgown.
“Are you the light, Kitsie? Or the bulb?”
She winces, confused, and looks at me like if she smashes me against the wall, she’ll find out. Maybe in my debris, when she realizes all the wires and connections I’m missing, she’ll understand why she’s never been able to tell what I am.
What am I going to do.
Ma drifts to the TV. No doubt she’ll try and steal its light next. Around and around, all day and night, since Dad died. Before, really, but I don’t remember much of that. Just her always flitting around inside the apartment like it’s some cage. Sometimes we had a little money, or the community assistance program had funding, and she had medicine. Now there’s nothing. Ma pries at the housing of the television, sending static ripples through the screen. A black and white photo of Evander Blackwood from what must be the 70s or 80s splits the screen with the glossy news anchor back in New York.